In addition to Israel absorbing scores of missiles fired from the Gaza Strip — proof if ever the UN needed it that the PA is ready for an elevation of its status in the august body — Syrian mortar shells have repeatedly hit (whether or not intentionally is not yet known) the Golan Heights during the past few days. The MSM’s coverage of Israel’s inevitable, albeit restrained, response, provide yet another window into the insidious way in which anti-Israel bias in the media plays out.

Compare, if you will, the following Associated Press headline currently appearing courtesy of Yahoo!:

At first blush, the headline is not particularly outlandish. After all, given the time-honored tradition among despots in the Arab world of seeking to deflect their population’s anger by directing it at the Jewish State, the possibility of the civil war in Syria drawing in Israel is a real concern.

However, followers of how the media covers Israel will note the familiar ring by which “concerns” about “spillover” or “escalation” are only highlighted by the media when Israel responds, even if only in a limited fashion, to violent or military attacks on its territory or population.

For example, by contrast to the Associated Press’ “concern” over spillover following Israel’s response to Syrian shelling, here is how the very same wire service, only a few weeks ago, reported following several days of artillery fire by Turkey responding to similarly “errant” mortar shells from Syria:

Turkey strikes back against Syria shelling

Beirut — The Turkish military retaliated with artillery fire fora sixth straight day Monday after a Syrian shell hit its territory, and Turkey’s president warned that “the worst-case scenario we have all been dreading” is unfolding in Syria and along its borders.

Got that? Turkey, the government of which has been open and aggressive in opposing the al-Assad regime and assisting the groups seeking its overthrow, responds to a single shell with six days of shelling, and the headlines dispassionately report the fact that Turkey struck back against Syrian shelling. They do not scream with “concern” over the risk of spillover or escalation.

Likewise, here is Reuters’ reporting today (as carried in Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News) on what is potentially a more ominous harbinger of escalation and widening of the Syrian conflict:

NATO chief says alliance will defend Turkey over Syria

NATO will defend alliance member Turkey, which struck back after mortar rounds fired from Syria landed inside its border, the alliance’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a meeting in Prague today.

“NATO as an organisation will do what it takes to protect and defend Turkey, our ally. We have more plans in place to make sure that we can protect and defend Turkey and hopefully that way also deter so that attacks on Turkey will not take place,” he said.

As with the reporting of Turkey’s response to shelling from Syria a few weeks ago, the media’s coverage of this important statement by NATO’s Secretary General shows no concern about possible “spillover” or “escalation”.

That treatment is reserved for Israel, when, despite publicly and otherwise having given every indication of a desire to stay out of the strife in Syria, it responds to multiple shells over several days with a limited response directed at the battery from which the shells were fired. Suddenly now, the AP and its ilk are “concerned”.

Is it any wonder, then, that many of those who rely on the MSM for news coverage of the region, have a distorted view of Middle Eastern affairs?

In a recent thread here on LGF, a number of us were debating the BBC’s removal from its Israel web page for the upcoming Olympic Games of any reference to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite the fact that Israel’s capital has been located in Jerusalem since 1949. For many of us long-time BBC watchers and critics, the BBC’s action smacked of the kind of anti-Israel bias to which we have long been accustomed, particularly since the BBC was, at the same time, listing East Jerusalem, a city that has never existed, as the capital of Palestine, a state that does not exist. (Whether Palestine should exist is not the point; I simply note that at present it does not legally exist and, therefore, does not have a capital).

For a brief moment, the media was reporting that the BBC, in response to a complaint by the Israeli government, “corrected” its error. Well, as Samuel Clemens might say, rumors of the death of anti-Israel bias at the Beeb are grossly exaggerated.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, which won the rights to broadcast the London Games, failed to list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on its Olympics website.
According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the site offered information about all the participating countries, including their athletes and capitals, but Israel’s profile made no mention of a capital city at all. The profile page for the Palestinian Olympic team, however, mentioned “east Jerusalem” as its capital.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev sent a letter of complaint to the Director of the BBC’s Bureau in Israel, Paul Danahar, saying he was “Dismayed by the BBC’s decision to discriminate against Israel on the BBC’s Olympic website.
“Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel, and accordingly we respectfully request the immediate rectification of this matter,” he wrote.
Following the complaint, the BBC added Jerusalem to Israel’s country profile on Thursday, but it merely informed readers that the “seat of government is Jerusalem” and that “most foreign embassies reside in Tel Aviv.” The page still does not list Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The BBC altered the Palestinian page as well, such that it now reads “Intended seat of government East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital.”
The BBC’s Olympics website is a source of information for millions of sports fans around the world.

This is nothing new to those who have been paying attention to the deluge of Anti-Israel drivel pouring out of Western Europe and the Middle East. This crap is the same stuff that Bay Area “liberals” love to promulgate, to show how racist the Zionist state is.

Bob Levinre: #16 Destro Some people just have a visceral response to those purposely distorting the truth--for the ultimate purpose of genocide. Real outrage. It's not time to chill. But thanks for the advice.

More better anti-Israel ink from the folks who brought you this garbage:Time Magazine Cover: Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace

What in the world is wrong with the editorial board at Time magazine that makes them think it is alright to expound profoundly anti-Israel, deeply flawed and incorrect propaganda pieces disguised as news? It makes me feel physically ill. If you still have a subscription to this fish-wrapper, cancel it now with a clear statement as to why you are doing so.

This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.

Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.

Justice Department Spokesman Marc Raimondi released the following statement Tuesday: "Three documents - a criminal Information, a plea agreement, and a statement of facts - were filed today in the United States District Court for the Western District of ...

Morgan Whitaker exposes where wingnuts are getting their "information" on "the evil, un-American, Kenyan, Marxist Muslim" Obama. This story is about a year old, but its still relevant today. David Jackson, of Belmont, NC, does not like President Obama. He ...

This is a random post, but since I did a little bit of research, I decided to write up a short summary that may be useful for others. Ever since the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin showed ...

What, precisely, is this woman's major malfunction? For going on 30 years, she has been the target of every strange conspiracy theory that the half-bright mind of man can dream up. She knows they're out there, pining to have ...

Jeb Bush has been adamant that he will not switch his positions on two issues, immigration and Common Core standards, that will generate conservative opposition in the Republican primaries. But he just made a major concession to conservatives on ...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Samsung over what it says is the recording of private conversations in homes through the company's television sets. The privacy rights group filed a complaint with ...

From the National Center for Science Education House File 272, introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives on February 17, 2015, and referred to the House Committee on Education, would, if enacted, prevent Iowa from adopting the Next Generation ...

When journalist Chai Jing released her documentary on China's air pollution, she probably could not have dreamed that her message would resonate so widely while boosting the share prices of so many "environmentally friendly" companies. On Monday, more than ...

I went out to the post box and found the latest issue of Nat Geo, March 2015, there with this cover photo: And the headlines: THE WAR ON SCIENCE:Climate Change does not existEvolution never happenedThe Mood Landing was fakeVaccinations can ...

Buried somewhere deep inside the code of some Web browsers and websites is an old, weak version of encryption that can easily be cracked. And the only reason it exists is because of bad U.S. policies that have since ...

Curt Schilling showed a young punk you don't mess with his daughter on twitter. Schilling's fond paternal congratulations were met with "tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely ...

In this era of raw nerves, protests and increased tensions, Americans really want leadership. It's natural for the public and the media to desperately seek out examples that appear to affirm that our nation is changing for the better. ...

By this process, you can arrive at a conclusion like this: To win the War on Women, you better put a ring on it. At CPAC, conservatives dedicated an entire panel to "The Future of Marriage." One could be ...

Earlier today interested Redditors posed questions to Poitras and Greenwald in Los Angeles, while Snowden posted from Moscow. A rare opportunity for average people to directly communicate with the (in)famous leaker.See the entire discussion HERE Redditor masondog13 asks: What's the ...

Wait a minute... watching Fox News and the Republican talking heads I learned that all Muslims are bad bad bad and in no way can Islam be interpreted as any sort of peaceful religion. news.yahoo.com OSLO (Reuters) - More than ...

For the last three years it's been my privilege to help coach a dedicated group of young women who have founded the first Women's Flat-Track Roller Derby league in Israel. They've learned, trained, fought, and worked unbelievably hard to bring ...

Added bold is all mine. this was an awkward way to go about gun control anyway. It clearly impacts the law abiding far more than felons, and is by that definition inefficient and intrusive at best. Gonna have to do ...

Frank says:

And all the rest of whom for which to whensoever of partially indeterminate bio-chemical degredation. Seek the path to the sudsy yellow nozzle of their foaming nocturnal parametric digital whole-wheat inter-faith geo-thermal terpsichorean ejectamenta. -- From board tape at Zappa concert, outdoors, at Blossom Music Center, Akron, Ohio, summer 1984. This quote was in the middle of a spoken section of "The Mud Club" in which a dude walks into the club with a blue Mohawk and proceeds to "work the floor, work the wall, work the monitor system. . . ." The band was having monitor feedback problems at the Blossom concert, and there are numerous references to P.A. equipment throughout this ramble. Other than that, the quote is meaningless, I guess. But great imagery!